Comment on SBA #119 maths
marcos@lemmy.world 14 hours agoThere’s a reason why the conventional division symbol requires grouping its terms.
If you see an exercise like that, the exercise is bad and your teacher must be educated.
Comment on SBA #119 maths
marcos@lemmy.world 14 hours agoThere’s a reason why the conventional division symbol requires grouping its terms.
If you see an exercise like that, the exercise is bad and your teacher must be educated.
FishFace@piefed.social 14 hours ago
I’m talking about exercises in textbooks, and you can find enough examples that writing them off as “the exercise is bad” is not really a good enough response.
The only way the exercise is bad is if it causes confusion in the people who are using the textbook. Those students have been exposed to the conventions of the textbook in question; they’re not people who were brought up on some other convention. You do see inline division and the vast majority of people interpret an expression like that above the way I said, so it’s not in practice confusing.
It’s not realistic to demand that every textbook uses the same conventions. It is realistic to demand that they lay out such conventions explicitly, which they unfortunately don’t.
marcos@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
So what? Those books are bad, at least on this specific way. They should be fixed.
It’s perfectly realistic to demand that teachers only use good books. Textbooks should explain things, not confuse.
FishFace@piefed.social 12 hours ago
Well, you sure did repeat your assertion!